


the sunlight clasps the earth

by Laura JV (jacquez)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Inspired by Fanart, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 03:51:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17890967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/pseuds/Laura%20JV
Summary: A good friend will always stab you in the front.





	the sunlight clasps the earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amy Sherrier](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Amy+Sherrier).
  * Inspired by [‘I’ve been re-watching “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” (aka the Granada Series)....’](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/459221) by Amy Sherrier. 



I had long been aware of a certain aesthetic appreciation of my friend Watson; when first I met him, he was thin and ill, although anyone could see his features were good enough. By the time I had known him six months, he and I sharing rooms together all that time, he had recovered much of his former strength, and there were days when all I wished to do was look at him.

  
I never had much use for the softer emotions, for love and all that twaddle. Women had never stirred my blood, and indeed, it was not until my supposed death that I became aware of how fond I had become of my friend. Still, I thought it nothing untoward. I was hardly ignorant of the sorts of liaisons common among a certain set of men, now brought to prominence by Mr. Wilde’s legal troubles, but I did not count myself among them. Not at that time.   
  
When I returned to London, Watson had been widowed; his wife, the former Miss Morstan, had died in childbirth, and the child had lived only a few days. It seemed as though Watson had aged ten years in the time I was gone, and though I could restore to him his friend, I could restore to him neither his beloved nor his offspring. Yet he was as strong as ever, I noted, as we were called upon in our adventures to give chase, or to subdue a ruffian.   
  
At home, of an evening, I began to notice in myself a peculiar partiality for his forearms. During the day, he was always properly dressed, but before the fire, smoking our pipes, he might forego his dressing-gown and instead wear only his trousers and shirtsleeves — and those, rolled to the elbow. He had not done so before his marriage, and I assumed it was a habit he had acquired when he lived with someone before whom such a state of deshabille might be a welcome sign of intimacy.    
  
I found it difficult to tear my eyes away from his exposed skin, from the sight of his hand around the belly of his pipe, from his fingers tracing patterns on his whiskey-glass, the tendons shifting as he moved. I will not say that he was in ignorance of my regard, but once I was aware of the nature of it, I took care to disguise it, to utter the occasional deduction about his day from the state of his body, as if such were the only reason my eyes landed upon him. He did not, I think, suspect me — not then. Not for some time.   
  
This state of affairs continued for over a year and might have continued indefinitely, had one of our Irregulars — a boy of twelve, by the name of Jenkins — not arrived at Baker Street one evening just after we had dined, a scruffy girl of six in his arms. Mrs. Hudson was inclined to disapprove of urchins, but she has a soft heart, and Jenkins begged piteously to see “the doctor.”    
  
The girl — his sister — had a deep glass-cut to her arm, which Jenkins had tied up tightly with clean rags. “Sensible fellow,” Watson said, smiling at him as he unwrapped the injury. “You may well have saved her life, and you did right bringing her here directly.”   
  
Mrs. Hudson brought a basin, and Watson — a staunch proponent of germ theory and of Lister’s work in asepsis — rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands and the wound most carefully with a solution of carbolic acid. Jenkins held his sister’s other hand firmly as Watson stitched the wound.    
  
I found myself entranced, by the motion of his hands, by the play of muscle beneath his skin as he worked, by the firmness of his fingers and the fineness of his stitch-work. I did not look away, as I ought, as I had done so carefully for so long, and came back to myself only when Jenkins’s sister flung herself into Watson’s arms with a cry of gratitude. He patted her shoulder. “My dear child,” he said, “I am very pleased to have been of service.”

Jealousy flared in my belly, shocking me. That someone should be held in those arms as I wished to be, that Watson should have his hands on them and not on me — the heat of it fed by my senseless longing and his damnable bared forearms. He looked at me over her head, and the smile on his face faded — what must have been on my own face! In an instant he understood that which I most wished to conceal from him.

I froze; I could scarcely breathe, and could certainly not move. The children departed, and Watson closed the door behind them and turned the lock. He rested one hand on the jamb, his head bowed, and then straightened and put his back to the door; he had never quite lost the bearing of a soldier. “How long?” he asked, and I flinched as if he had struck me.

He might yet strike me, for my inverted desires. “Watson,” I said, setting my pipe down on the mantel, “whatever do you mean?” I am no coward, but I thought perhaps our friendship might yet be preserved by a stubborn fiction.

“Don’t toy with me, Holmes,” he replied, and I curled the hand he could not see into a fist. I did not want it to come to blows, between us, but I was determined to defend myself if necessary. 

“Come now,” I said, “perhaps some brandy?” 

“Holmes,” he ground out, between clenched teeth, and crossed the room in three strides. I fell back, raised my fist to ward him off — and found myself lifted, pressed to the wall beside the mantel, Watson’s strong arms around my waist, his hands warm through the fabric of my trousers, and his mouth on my own. 

I tried to speak, to say his name, and he opened his mouth and slid his tongue alongside mine. I had never been so aroused, my cock throbbing between my legs. I pressed my fist against his arm, desperate to push him away before he felt it — and oh, he took a half-step closer, leaned his weight into me to hold me against the wall, and he was hard, too, his arms and chest and thighs and cock hard against me, but his mouth slick and sweet.

Before I knew what I was doing, I slid my free hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, whimpered his Christian name into his mouth. “Yes,” he said, kissing beneath my ear and down my neck as I shuddered and clung to him. “Yes, Sherlock.” He gentled me, then, as a man might gentle a horse, his hands soothing down my ribs and landing on my hips, his mouth softening on my skin. “May I take you to bed, my love?” he asked, and brushed his lips over my eyes.

I turned my face into his neck, inhaled the warm scent of him, pressed my cock back against his.  _ My love _ , he had called me. “You may take me anywhere, John,” I said, “in any way you desire,” and he laughed as he led me to his room.

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is a quote often attributed to Oscar Wilde. Whether he said it or not, I feel like he would probably approve of its use as a dick joke.


End file.
